[HN Gopher] Effective YouTube Kids: Quality Content in Small Doses
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       Effective YouTube Kids: Quality Content in Small Doses
        
       Author : philips
       Score  : 33 points
       Date   : 2024-07-01 02:20 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (abparenting.substack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (abparenting.substack.com)
        
       | Dramatize wrote:
       | I found the best way to deal with YouTube is to download the
       | videos and airdrop them to my son's iPad.
       | 
       | This way he can still view a selected range of Minecraft videos
       | without getting stuck in the cesspool of '100 days as a chicken'
       | playlists.
        
         | toomuchtodo wrote:
         | Plex, Jellyfin, and similar solutions where you rip content for
         | your own media collection and serve in a constrained manner can
         | solve for this. App gets installed on kid's device, and you use
         | the cli or use the web interface to push it into the storage
         | system it's streamed from.
         | 
         | (i do this, it is very straightforward and keeps my kids off of
         | Youtube)
        
       | KaiserPro wrote:
       | You can't leave your kids alone with youtube.
       | 
       | Its addictive and stuffed full of advertising. I'm lucky that I
       | have BBC and netflix to choose from, sure its annoying them
       | watching shit on repeat, but at least they are not one click away
       | from something nasty, or downright bullshit.
       | 
       | If there is something good, we watch it together. But there is no
       | way they are allowed it on their own
        
         | freitzkriesler2 wrote:
         | This , you have to be a really bad parent to trust YouTube with
         | a child especially after elsagate. The fact that people here
         | think otherwise is testament to broader culture problem.
        
           | mixmastamyk wrote:
           | No one has yet mentioned the surveillance aspect yet, so I
           | will. Yes, they were caught spying on children too.
           | 
           | https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/technology/google-
           | youtube...
        
         | philips wrote:
         | YouTube Kids is a different constrained environment - different
         | apps and websites from YouTube. And with the configuration I
         | lay out in this blog post the kids can only play videos you
         | explicitly share with them. It is the easiest analogue to
         | having just a VHS player and a home video collection that I can
         | think of.
         | 
         | Regardless, I agree in general the defaults on YouTube are
         | terrible for everyone including kids.
        
       | johnsillings wrote:
       | great channel recommendations.
        
       | guywithahat wrote:
       | Incidentally I've been working on a parental controls app, which
       | has some YouTube specific functionality. Currently it only gives
       | you the ability to block YouTube shorts, but more channel-
       | specific functionality is coming https://www.parentcontrols.win/
       | 
       | Admittedly I think it'll be hard for youtube (and similar sites)
       | to build proper child filters and habits. Not because they're bad
       | people or anything, just because it's too opposed to their
       | incentives
        
         | feoren wrote:
         | > Not because they're bad people or anything, just because it's
         | too opposed to their incentives
         | 
         | What a ridiculous turn of phrase. "I kill and eat other human
         | beings, not because I'm a bad person or anything, just because
         | it is my incentive to do so." Those incentives are self-
         | imposed. Having self-created incentives to do bad things is
         | what _makes you_ a bad person.
        
         | philips wrote:
         | I have thought about building something like this but it felt
         | like building an ad blocking business: constantly doing wack a
         | mole or fighting lawsuits.
         | 
         | How are you thinking about those problems?
        
       | philips wrote:
       | Woah! Happy to see this on the frontpage.
       | 
       | I have enjoyed exploring the intersection between technology and
       | parenting. It can be difficult to find great applications and
       | tools to use with my kids. But, there are things out there that
       | are awesome and aren't exploitive.
       | 
       | I have found that one of my principles while parenting young
       | children in this digital age is trying to teach my kids that they
       | can use technology but we need to make active choices on how to
       | use it. The defaults aren't necessarily the best. In that vein I
       | also put together a list of mobile apps too:
       | https://abparenting.substack.com/p/mobile-games-for-playing-...
       | 
       | I would love to hear other creative uses and configurations
       | people have for technology with their kids.
        
       | 6510 wrote:
       | I liked this one
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/shorts/U0VAswvOaJY
        
       | viraptor wrote:
       | I've tried to work with the YT app, but it's got weird/bad
       | failure modes with the allowed content. In the end, for the
       | occasional screen I found Khan Academy Kids can be even more
       | engaging and a better curated experience.
        
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